CD Projekt Red "pushing boundaries of the whole industry"

At E3 we spoke with lead quest designer Paweł Sasko about the mature topics in the game, which will extend beyond sex and violence.

CD Projekt Red has established themselves as one of the world's leading development studios after producing the critically-acclaimed RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and we talked with lead quest designer Paweł Sasko at E3 about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, which looks to be addressing mature topics in more ways than one.

"One thing that's important for me is like, when we are making games we're actually trying to make them for mature audiences, but not only talking about sex and blood and killing people and so on, but also things regarding philosophy, and political topics, and being inclusive to minorities, and regarding gender topics," Sasko explained.

"Actually all those things are happening in the game. We have certain quests that are [addressing] that topic, like spiritual life, religion, you know. You have all that in the game, and for me, what's important for the games in general - and we can really do it here in CD Projekt - is that we're really pushing the boundaries of the genre, of the whole industry I think, because we are making these things more mature."

"I remember when I was designing the Bloody Baron storyline [in The Witcher]. That was actually my quest and I'm really thankful for everybody who played it and liked it, and I remember us talking internally and thinking 'is this really a place for that type of topic in a computer game?' because that's not something that has been done before. But we thought if it's something for a mature audience, well, we have to do it, like do it right."

"And this is something we put a great deal of emphasis on to just make sure this is done right, and I think that players actually enjoy it, so it's just a matter of finding this good blend between fun, I would say, between game and meaning, you know, and art in all that, and that's just something that's extremely beautiful for me, and it's really important for me, and here at CD Projekt, we can really do it."

Do you like games handling mature topics in this way?